Amazing Race's Pam and Winnie: We Picked the Lemon of the Donkeysby Joyce Eng

Pam and Winnie were cruising to a second-place finish on The Amazing Race until they ran into some "stubborn asses" — or donkeys. Rather than tough it out, they switched Detours, but messed up twice when they couldn't spot an ostrich cutout on the trail and subsequently got eliminated. "We knew it was over when we got it wrong the second time," Pam tells TVGuide.com. "Everyone has that hope that some other team is behind them or someone got penalized or it's a non-elimination leg, but we knew we were last. We had wasted too much time." Find out how long the whole ordeal took and if they have any regrets.

It seemed like you decided to switch really quickly. What was your rationale besides the donkeys not moving?Pam: Yeah, we did change really quickly, but we knew that animals were always unpredictable and we probably spent like 15-20 minutes trying to make them move. We were thinking, if we jumped on the horses, then at least we're moving forward. The donkeys would just not go. They were stubborn asses! We picked the lemon of the donkeys. By the time we switched, everyone else's donkeys were going.

Do you think you should've waited it out more?Winnie: I think we should've freakin' seen the ostrich! [Laughs] But yeah, we probably should've waited it out more. We also thought that by switching, maybe others would switch too because initially no one's donkeys were moving. But that did not happen.Pam: At that moment, when the adrenaline's rushing and you're just trying to get things done, you just think switching is the best.

How did you miss the ostrich twice?Pam: All of those cutouts were hidden really well. We were on that trail for a really long time. That probably took an hour to get through. Trying to spot each animal and memorizing them were hard. We heard that the ostrich was hidden pretty deep in the bush. But it's not like we have a hunter's eye! [Laughs] We can spot things in like Urth Caffe, but not random animals in the bush! ... And the last one had two animals, so we thought, "We got this!" But no, that was a trick.

Did you think about going back to the donkeys after you were wrong the first time?Pam: Well, we figured we had gotten the order wrong. ... We talked about going back to the donkeys, but we were thinking that the donkeys are not going to move again, so we should just power through this again and hopefully we'll be fighting for last place.

It had to have been deflating to know you were in second place and now you might be in last. Did you see any teams after you switched?Winnie: Yeah, we just wanted to fight for second to last place. We knew a lot of time had passed. ... We saw Meghan and Joey when we went to do the horse the second time. We didn't see Max and Katie. [Meghan and Joey] had just gotten to the donkeys. We thought Max and Katie could be behind us, but we thought worst case scenario, it was us against Meghan and Joey. And we didn't see them after we started the trail again.Winnie: We also didn't know how long the donkey Detour took. We figured it was faster, but we thought since our donkeys were so stubborn, everyone would be struggling and it'd take long.

Do you have any idea if you would've beaten either of them had you been right the second time?Winnie: We really don't know. They didn't tell us. You can only gauge how long you're spending on things. It's hard to guess how long everyone else takes and we didn't see them at the end.

Do you regret switching?Winnie: Obviously, there's part of us that's like, "We shouldn't have switched." But it's hard to regret it because it seemed like we truly were not made for that challenge! It was just our time to go. Having watched it, everyone else had such bad luck and for us to not overcome their bad luck, it was not meant to be.

You were good racers, but had a lot of trouble navigating.Pam: I would say we got majorly lost only one time on the jet skis.Winnie: The time in New Zealand was really overdramatized. It really was just one U-Turn. I didn't feel like we got lost that much. I think a lot of other teams got more lost than we did. I think the expectation because we're Asian is that we're bad drivers. [Laughs] We have to reinforce the stereotype!

Winnie, a lot of fans were annoyed that Connor looked at your surfboard. Are you upset that he did?Winnie: I was shocked when I saw that in the episode because I didn't know that had happened. I had the surfboard turned into my body, and I was running down cliffs for 30 minutes, so I was kind of delirious. In my head, I thought the surfboard was covered. That was shocking that he did that, but it is a strategic move and it wasn't illegal. Everyone decides how they want to play the game. If you can't figure it out on your own, that's a good strategic move.

Were you surprised that he didn't take your deal?Winnie: No. I threw it out there as a last resort. At that point, I could not find Phil. I didn't want to just wait around for Connor and follow him because that seemed like such a pu--- move, so I suggested it. And if he didn't take it, he didn't take it. It was just like on the off-chance that he would say yes. So I ran off when he said no. But I didn't know that he looked at my board.

What are you up to now?Winnie: Talking to you.Oh, you mean in general. [Laughs] Back to our lives.Pam: We're having fun watching the show every Sunday. We're just back to normal stuff.

Pamela Chien and Winnie Sung were eliminated from The Amazing Race during Sunday night's seventh broadcast of the CBS reality competition's 22nd season.

The "Best Friends" team became the fourth team eliminated from the around-the-world competition after they arrived at the Race's sixth Pit Stop at Royal Tree Lodge in Botswana in last place. The pair fell behind when they decided to switch Detour tasks.

In an exclusive interview with Reality TV World on Monday, Pam and Winnie talked about their The Amazing Race experience. Below is the first half of their interview. Check back with Reality TV World on Tuesday for the concluding portion.

Reality TV World: How far behind Max Bichler and Katie Bichler do you think you girls finally arrived at the Pit Stop? Pamela Chien: It's hard to tell exactly how much time, but I think we were actually pretty far behind. By the time we started the second go-around of horses, at that point, I think we had already lost. So, it could've been quite a lot, and then going back to the donkeys, we spent quite a bit of time just getting our donkeys to move again.

Reality TV World: Did you think you had a good shot at a non-elimination leg or did you figure that wouldn't happen because the prior leg was one?Winnie Sung: We probably figured that this is not a non-elimination leg because the last one was, but you know, we were hoping that something was going to happen so that you're not actually eliminated from the Race.

Pamela Chien: We were hoping someone got a penalty or like, you know, something crazy happened and we miraculously slipped by.

Winnie Sung: There's always that little glimmer of hope.

Reality TV World: Did it kind of worsen the blow of your elimination knowing you left the previous Pit Stop in second place? That must've been a little frustrating.Pamela Chien: I mean, it's not so frustrating but I'm just disappointed to know that we were kind of frontrunners for a little bit and then to end up getting eliminated the way we did.

But at this point, having gotten pretty far along in the Race, it's like we were just so happy to have been there. We went into this whole thing feeling so grateful to even be selected for this. So, it's hard to be disappointed -- or it's hard to be really disappointed -- because we were just so pleased to be there.

Reality TV World: You girls were pretty certain Bates Battaglia and Anthony Battaglia got to the Roadblock task before you, so the show showed you opting out of doing the Fast Forward task. Had you been a little more uncertain about the standings, do you think you definitely would've gone for the Fast Forward? And looking back on what the task was, how do you think you would've done?Winnie Sung: We knew that Bates and Anthony did it because they got there first. We saw their car at the location, so we knew that there was no way that they didn't do it. If we had gotten there and we were the first ones there, like our car was the only one there, we probably would've gone for it.

But seeing how it was like a water skiing task, I don't know. We both never water skied, and I know that that requires a lot of upper-body strength, which we both don't have.

Pamela Chien: Hey, speak for yourself! (Laughs)

Winnie Sung: (Laughs) But I don't know. I don't know how we would've done. We probably would've gone for it for sure, but it looked really, really hard.

Pamela Chien: Based on the luck we were having with animals, I bet a crocodile would've come up and [taken] one of us out that way, because we had some serious bad luck with animals.

Reality TV World: How long would you say the Roadblock task take you girls to complete?Winnie Sung: The Roadblock was pretty quick. It was like 20 minutes.

Pamela Chien: Yeah, that's about right.

Winnie Sung: Yeah.

Reality TV World: How did you determine who would do which Roadblock? Were you just alternating or was there a strategy behind it?Pamela Chien: In the beginning, we tried to strategize and like guess based on our strengths who should do what. That didn't turn out well because I apparently thought I had good balance, but clearly, I don't. (Laughs) At that point, we just started to kind of switch off but try to gauge what the clue said it might be, you know?

Winnie Sung: So I mean, we thought switching off was probably the best way to go to, because that evened it up all the time. We were pretty even. We did three and three.

Pamela Chien: And we saw that it was like a giant stick in the water. And we were like, "No more sticks! I can't look at another one!" (Laughs)

Winnie Sung: There was this big, long stick. (Laughs)

Reality TV World: Why did you originally decide on the "Brawn" Detour task instead of "Brains?" It seemed like an odd choice considering you girls pride yourselves on your memory skills. "Brains" just seemed like the obvious way to go for you two.Winnie Sung: I mean, we knew that we were like good at memory stuff, we didn't think that we were like complete utter weaklings. So it's like "Brawn" didn't scare us, because we knew that "Brawn" was probably going to be a lot quicker.

Because it's not like we were like, "Oh my God, we're only going to do memory stuff from here on out." But yeah, we were just stronger in our memory stuff, but we were still thinking strategically that "Brawn" was going to be much quicker, and it didn't look too difficult.

Reality TV World: So how long do you think you spent attempting the "Brawn" task before you decided to switch?Winnie Sung: We were probably there for a good 20 minutes trying to get the donkeys to move after we had loaded up our cart. So they just looked like they were not going to budge. That's when we decided to switch Detours.

Reality TV World: The show showed you girls making a couple attempts to line up the animals properly for the "Brains" task? How many tries did it take you and what did you find difficult about that specific type of memory challenge?Pamela Chien: We didn't have a problem with the memory. The problem was we completely missed a cutout. So we didn't even see one of them, so we were going to be wrong every single time.

Reality TV World: So how long did that "Brains" task end up taking you then? Any idea?Pamela Chien: The "Brains" task probably took -- well the first time around on the horses, it was like an hour, and the second time, it was maybe like 40 minutes.

That Detour was definitely a lot longer, and we got thrown off too because the last cutout was two animals -- it was a bird on a hippo. And then we mistaken the rhino for hippos, so we thought for sure that was 10 animals, 10 species. But all along, we just completely missed an entire animal cutout.

Reality TV World: When David O'Leary and Connor O'Leary told you girls they needed to remove themselves from the Race earlier this season due to Dave's ankle injury, you decided to keep that a secret from the other teams in the hope of slowing them down because they might've assumed Dave and Connor were behind them. Now that you've been watching the season unfold on TV, do you think that strategy worked at all?Pamela Chien: We didn't really think of it as a strategy. It was just like, "Why share information? That's not necessary to do. I think maybe we should just keep it a secret." Especially at that point for us too, there were quite a few teams left, we'd do anything to kind of alleviate the pressure and stress of all the teams practically.

Winnie Sung: And how sweet would it be to see someone U-Turn Dave and Connor? (Laughs)

Above is the first half of our exclusive interview with Pam and Winnie. Check back with Reality TV World on Tuesday for the concluding portion.

Read what Pam and Winnie had to say about their time in the game in their exclusive elimination interview!

Win K: Pam & Winnie, you did your best, played the game of Amazing Race well! would you consider doing it again if you could?Winnie: Yeah, we would do it again in a heartbeat. We loved the Race so much. We would do it again even if there was no prize money.Pam: Yeah, I would for sure do it in a heartbeat too. We had so much fun and we have unfinished business with donkeys and ostriches.

Kelli N: I'd like to know when do they eat, we never see them eat or sleep. Who do they hope wins the race?Winnie: We mostly based our diet based off of airplane food and pretty much all the awesome people that bought food for us at the airport. Pam: We hope nobody wins. No I'm just kidding. We hope the team that overcomes the most hardships wins. Basically, we are rooting for anyone.

Bob B: What was the note that the contestants had taped to their steering wheels when driving in Botswana?Winnie: The note was pretty much telling you how to switch to four wheel drive because we were doing quite a bit of off-roading.

Crystal S: What was the most memorable moment during your experience on the show?Winnie: I think the most memorable moment was camping in Africa and transporting the baby goats. They were so cute we wanted to smuggle them back into the US.Pam: I think my most memorable moment was interacting with the Bushmen. It was fun having them lead us and pretending we knew what they were talking about.

Dorothy E: What did you miss about being in the states?Pam: We missed eating good food because we were living off of airplane food.Winnie: I think that was the hardest part about racing was not being able to eat whatever we wanted.

Aly C: What made the last memory challenge so difficult compared to the challenges on previous legs?Winnie: We didn't have a problem memorizing the animals, our problem was that we completely missed spotting an ostrich and then mistaking the hippo for the rhino tile.

Matthew M: Do you think it's better to run the race alone or with an alliance?Pam: I think it is better to run the Race alone because in the end there is only one winner. It is better to do things alone and not depend on others.

Ian M: What was going through your mind when you realized you were last place considering that you were in a consistent second place throughout most of the episode?Pam: When we realized we were in last place it was disappointing but we were laughing at ourselves because we knew we probably made some kind of silly error. We were just trying to enjoy ourselves and look back at all the amazing things we had already done.Winnie: We are so grateful that we had this experience. It is seriously the best time we have had in our entire lives so far.

Read what Pam and Winnie had to say about their time in the game in their exclusive elimination interview!

Win K: Pam & Winnie, you did your best, played the game of Amazing Race well! would you consider doing it again if you could?Winnie: Yeah, we would do it again in a heartbeat. We loved the Race so much. We would do it again even if there was no prize money.Pam: Yeah, I would for sure do it in a heartbeat too. We had so much fun and we have unfinished business with donkeys and ostriches.

Kelli N: I'd like to know when do they eat, we never see them eat or sleep. Who do they hope wins the race?Winnie: We mostly based our diet based off of airplane food and pretty much all the awesome people that bought food for us at the airport. Pam: We hope nobody wins. No I'm just kidding. We hope the team that overcomes the most hardships wins. Basically, we are rooting for anyone.

Bob B: What was the note that the contestants had taped to their steering wheels when driving in Botswana?Winnie: The note was pretty much telling you how to switch to four wheel drive because we were doing quite a bit of off-roading.

Crystal S: What was the most memorable moment during your experience on the show?Winnie: I think the most memorable moment was camping in Africa and transporting the baby goats. They were so cute we wanted to smuggle them back into the US.Pam: I think my most memorable moment was interacting with the Bushmen. It was fun having them lead us and pretending we knew what they were talking about.

Dorothy E: What did you miss about being in the states?Pam: We missed eating good food because we were living off of airplane food.Winnie: I think that was the hardest part about racing was not being able to eat whatever we wanted.

Aly C: What made the last memory challenge so difficult compared to the challenges on previous legs?Winnie: We didn't have a problem memorizing the animals, our problem was that we completely missed spotting an ostrich and then mistaking the hippo for the rhino tile.

Matthew M: Do you think it's better to run the race alone or with an alliance?Pam: I think it is better to run the Race alone because in the end there is only one winner. It is better to do things alone and not depend on others.

Ian M: What was going through your mind when you realized you were last place considering that you were in a consistent second place throughout most of the episode?Pam: When we realized we were in last place it was disappointing but we were laughing at ourselves because we knew we probably made some kind of silly error. We were just trying to enjoy ourselves and look back at all the amazing things we had already done.Winnie: We are so grateful that we had this experience. It is seriously the best time we have had in our entire lives so far.

Read what Pam and Winnie had to say about their time in the game in their exclusive elimination interview!

Win K: Pam & Winnie, you did your best, played the game of Amazing Race well! would you consider doing it again if you could?Winnie: Yeah, we would do it again in a heartbeat. We loved the Race so much. We would do it again even if there was no prize money.Pam: Yeah, I would for sure do it in a heartbeat too. We had so much fun and we have unfinished business with donkeys and ostriches.

Kelli N: I'd like to know when do they eat, we never see them eat or sleep. Who do they hope wins the race?Winnie: We mostly based our diet based off of airplane food and pretty much all the awesome people that bought food for us at the airport. Pam: We hope nobody wins. No I'm just kidding. We hope the team that overcomes the most hardships wins. Basically, we are rooting for anyone.

Bob B: What was the note that the contestants had taped to their steering wheels when driving in Botswana?Winnie: The note was pretty much telling you how to switch to four wheel drive because we were doing quite a bit of off-roading.

Crystal S: What was the most memorable moment during your experience on the show?Winnie: I think the most memorable moment was camping in Africa and transporting the baby goats. They were so cute we wanted to smuggle them back into the US.Pam: I think my most memorable moment was interacting with the Bushmen. It was fun having them lead us and pretending we knew what they were talking about.

Dorothy E: What did you miss about being in the states?Pam: We missed eating good food because we were living off of airplane food.Winnie: I think that was the hardest part about racing was not being able to eat whatever we wanted.

Aly C: What made the last memory challenge so difficult compared to the challenges on previous legs?Winnie: We didn't have a problem memorizing the animals, our problem was that we completely missed spotting an ostrich and then mistaking the hippo for the rhino tile.

Matthew M: Do you think it's better to run the race alone or with an alliance?Pam: I think it is better to run the Race alone because in the end there is only one winner. It is better to do things alone and not depend on others.

Ian M: What was going through your mind when you realized you were last place considering that you were in a consistent second place throughout most of the episode?Pam: When we realized we were in last place it was disappointing but we were laughing at ourselves because we knew we probably made some kind of silly error. We were just trying to enjoy ourselves and look back at all the amazing things we had already done.Winnie: We are so grateful that we had this experience. It is seriously the best time we have had in our entire lives so far.

This week on The Amazing Race, Pamela Chien and Winnie Sung were eliminated from competition after struggling with two challenges in Africa.

Although Pam and Winnie made use of U-Turn earlier in The Amazing Race to get ahead of the other teams, the two best friends from Los Angeles struggled with the last two roadblocks to fall behind the pack. When the second leg in Africa called for a choice between “brains” and “braun”, Pam and Winnie went back and forth on both tasks and eventually put themselves out of contention.

The day after this week’s Amazing Race, The Deadbolt caught up with Pam and Winnie for an exclusive chat about what went wrong, using the U-Turn, and how the gained an edge over the competition after the first leg in Bora Bora.

THE DEADBOLT: How long did it take you to finish both tasks?PAMELA CHIEN: To finish both tasks, over an hour.

WINNIE SUNG: About two and a half hours.

THE DEADBOLT: So, what was the secret to getting the donkeys to move?WINNIE: Nothing. Just being patient and waiting.

THE DEADBOLT: Looking back, do you think you would’ve been able to redo the “Brains” task one more time and still be in the race?PAMELA: No.

WINNIE: No. By the time we finished the task on the first try, we were already last. We were already done at that point.

PAMELA: The horse challenge took much longer to do.

THE DEADBOLT: How awkward was it to run the race with Meaghan and Joey after the U-Turn?WINNIE: It wasn’t really. I think they understood and knew it was part of the game. I mean, they were okay with it. Meaghan was a little upset but everyone got along pretty well.

PAMELA: At least we exercised our right to U-Turn before we were eliminated.

WINNIE: When we watched the previous seasons and nobody would use the U-Turn, we were like, “Come on! Use the U-Turn!”

PAMELA: We didn’t want to be that team who said, “We choose not to use the U-Turn.”

WINNIE: Initially we wanted to U-Turn the hockey brothers because they were the strongest team, but everyone was in agreement to U-Turn Joey and Meaghan. We didn’t want to get U-Turned, so we were like, “Okay, as long as it’s not us.”

THE DEADBOLT: Since you were first going to Africa, how much confidence did that give you in terms of really getting ahead of the others?WINNIE: We weren’t really first going into Africa, we were last.

PAMELA: We were first place, but we encountered some bad luck with our baggage. We were last on that flight.

WINNIE: We were used to coming from behind.

PAMELA: We never felt that sense of confidence because we knew the whole race is anyone’s game at any point. We never got that feeling like it was our game or that we should be in the front all of the time.

WINNIE: We were literally running and racing against professional athletes. It’s a miracle that we’re still alive.

THE DEADBOLT: How did you feel about Connor getting the surfboard task right after he looked at yours?WINNIE: I was shocked, because I didn’t know he did that until we watched the episode on Sunday. But it was a strategic move and everyone decides how they want to play the game going into it.

PAMELA: They owe us money. [laughs]

WINNIE: Yeah, they owe us money from that $5000. [laughs]

PAMELA: We should get royalties.

THE DEADBOLT: Back in Bora Bora, how could you tell that Idries and Jamil weren’t delivery men? What gave them away?PAMELA: They were really smart.

WINNIE: We were super scared of them. We were like, “Oh, no! They’re going to be trouble.” Going into the race, we knew they were really scared of water. We knew that Bora Bora may be trouble because there’d be a lot of water challenges.

PAMELA: They were really, really smart and very well spoken, so it was obvious they were more than delivery drivers.

THE DEADBOLT: How surprised were you both that they were still behind you in Bora Bora?WINNIE: I was hoping they were still behind us. When Pam was doing the stilts, I was counting the number of stilts at the finish line and there was still one missing. So, I thought they were still behind us but you never know. When we got to the mat, we were just so excited and happy not to be eliminated at that point.

THE DEADBOLT: How was the race different than what you expected before you started?PAMELA: I think the thing that was hard to anticipate was the stress and the pressure from everyone being so frantic.

WINNIE: And we were so hungry. I didn’t think we were going to be that hungry. We were so hungry the entire time.

PAMELA: We were also relieved to find that the bathroom situation was up to par for us. So, we weren’t bothered at all by that.

WINNIE: There were a couple of “iffy” moments in Africa but it worked out well.